SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE

07.29.13

Inside a Crisis Pregnancy Center

A writer visits a pro-life clinic under FBI investigation.

When writer Jaclyn Munson visited a crisis pregnancy center called EMC FrontLine in the South Bronx, which operates 12 locations in New York, she was shocked at what she found. The pro-life center—currently under an FBI investigation—is next to a tattoo parlor, is equipped with unsanitary bathrooms, has staff who lies about what happens during an abortion (they made Munson watch a 25-minute documentary that said intestines get sucked out through your vagina, and most women who experience blood complications will die), and engage in slut-shaming rhetoric, according to Munson. She was pressed for personal information about her fake pregnancy and also was handed fetus models of all sizes. The last question Munson received was a “rhetorical” one: “Why are you giving yourself up sexually?”